Day: February 18, 2012

Right outside my office, there was an empty cubicle and right next to the empty cube was P’s desk which overflowed with papers and magazines. I told P. that she and I should both ask management to break down that wall and enlarge her space into the empty cube. We did and now there’s one large cube.

I like encouraging people and being encouraged to learn, grow, and get bigger. Not everyone does this. I think sometimes people might feel like enlarging someone else’s space might diminish their own. But admiring and enlarging others makes us bigger too.

I love the way Vincent Van Gogh wrote in his letters to Theo about his admiration for his contemporaries. He admired religion, Japanese art, other artists.

“If I love someone or something, then I do so in earnest and sometimes with real passion and fire, but that doesn’t make me think as a matter of course that only a few people are perfect and all the others worthless — far from it.”

More inspiring quotes from Vincent van Gogh:

“There is nothing more truly artistic than to love people.”

“I always think that the best way to know God is to love many things.”

And in his letters, Vincent advised his brother, Theo, over and over, to “admire.” For me, that means to enlarge others. I look for the good in everyone and try to get them more space.